


dancing on the ashes (we set fire to our homes)

by sourpastels



Series: power up [2]
Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Found Family, Friends to Lovers, Inspired by Marvel's Runaways, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Alternating, POV all characters, Slow Burn, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-02
Updated: 2019-10-19
Packaged: 2019-11-08 06:10:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17975942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sourpastels/pseuds/sourpastels
Summary: All teenagers have problems — school stress is getting on top of you, your parents don’t understand you, the person you like doesn’t like you back.Na Jaemin doesn’t have problems. His lowest grade is an A-, his parents are wonderful, and he’s never had a real crush to worry about.That's what he keeps telling himself anyway, but after what was supposed to be a normal night at home, his entire world comes crashing down around him and everything he's been trying to ignore for the past year comes crawling to the surface, as well as making him face things he never even thought possible.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> As noted in the tags, this work is inspired by marvel's runaways. It's a random mix of comics canon, tv show canon and (hopefully mostly) my own stuff. You don't have to have read or seen runaways to understand this.
> 
> Warnings for this chapter: blood, knives, cheeky bit of murder, missing persons.
> 
> Other than that I hope you enjoy this!

Jaemin watches with a sick sense of fascination as the blood flows down the rivulets of the ceremonial dagger, dripping at his father’s feet. It’s darker than the suit he’s wearing, more real, more _wrong_.

A young man crumples to the ground. Despite being a floor above, watching the scene from the catacombs, he sees everything in sharp clarity. The boy wheezes for air, a sick, _wet_ sound that Jaemin’s never heard the likes of before. As he lies dying, Jaemin watches his face, betrayal and fear sparking through his eyes like an explosion. He knows the boy can’t see him, but he still swears they meet eyes as the light in his goes out for good.

There’s another sick, wet sound as next to him, Renjun throws up olive and jalapeño pizza.

Someone is crying, maybe it’s him.

“We need to get out of here,” Mark says.

Jaemin runs and never looks back.

 

— Earlier That Day —

 

All teenagers have problems — school stress is getting on top of you, your parents don’t understand you, the person you like doesn’t like you back.

Na Jaemin doesn’t have problems. His lowest grade is an A-, his parents are wonderful, and he’s never had a real crush to worry about.

There’s a clatter from behind him as something knocks to the ground. Lee Jeno shoots the teacher an apologetic smile as one of his friends starts to gather up the remains of their science experiment. Across the room, Huang Renjun glares through kohl-rimmed eyes, more focused on doodling than the assignment in front of him.

Jaemin turns back to the front of the room. It’s not his business. It hasn’t been for a year now.

In front of him, his beaker starts to fizzle into a deep purple colour. For most of his subjects, he studies to keep his grades up, but chemistry has always come naturally to him. It’s easy — you just mix this and that and let your mind fall into the peaceful monotony of measurements and chemicals.

The teacher looks over his work with a proud nod. While he waits for the other kids to finish he cracks open his books and starts studying for the history test tomorrow.

He packs up slowly when the bell rings. He’s in no rush to be anywhere. His high school is the most privileged, swanky school in the even more privileged, swanky Oceanside. It’s a school for the kids of actors, CEOs and geniuses. This means that as well as offering some of the best education for its students, it’s also ridiculously slack on them, with long breaks between classes and few strict rules, providing your parents can pay the school board to look it over.

Jaemin’s parents have never had to pay the school board off. He’s never felt the need to break the rules— he’s ditched class, once or twice, but that was back then. Now, his attendance makes his parents ruffle his hair with pride. They say he’s going to grow up to be just as successful as them. Whenever they do he reminds them that they’re _actors_ , but secretly they all know he likes to hear it.

He makes the executive decision to go to the bathroom before his next class. It’s a good decision, he thinks, smart, resourceful, an exemplary moment of time management. It remains a good decision until he actually enters the bathroom.

Mark Lee is hunched over the sinks, avoiding his face in the mirror. In the harsh fluorescent lights, Jaemin can clearly see the red sting of his eyes and the tear tracks on his cheeks.

Neither of them speak for a moment. They don’t even seem to breathe. Jaemin is frozen in the doorway, door still held open. Mark watches him through the mirrors.

One long second, and he can’t take it anymore.

“I’m just gonna—“ he gestures behind him, ready to rush out and pretend he didn’t see anything.

“No,” Mark says, voice rough. “Come in. Close the door behind you.”

Jaemin has no reason to listen to him. If Jaemin wanted to, he could still turn and run. He could, he knows this, things aren’t like they used to be.

He walks inside and closes the door.

“I didn’t realise you’d be here,” Jaemin says, twiddling his thumbs because he needs to do _something_.

“What? In the bathroom?” Mark raises an eyebrow.

“At school,” Jaemin answers, a little bolder than before.

Mark lets out a sigh. “I am still a student here, Jaemin.”

A bitter snort makes its way out of Jaemin. “Your attendance records would disagree.”

For the past year, Mark has barely come to school. At first, it was different, for two reasons: one was that everyone understood why, the second was that Jaemin cared.

“That’s not what I want to talk to you about,” Mark says.

Jaemin has a feeling he’s not going to like what he’s going to hear next, but curiosity pushes him forward even as his nails dig into his palm.

“What _do_ you want to talk to me about?”

“It’s...it’s complicated.” Mark breathes. Jaemin can see the furrow of his brow, the tense line of his mouth. In the back of his mind he realises that whatever Mark has to say, it’s not easy for him to talk about. “But...I don’t just want to talk to you. I want to talk to _all_ of you.”

Jaemin’s nails dig in deeper. Blood is probably pooling in his hands. It should be a concern, but the thought is absent, meaningless, lost behind the anger sparking in his spine.

He laughs. “I think it’s way too late for that.”

“Please,” Mark’s voice is soft yet insistent. It’s familiar. That only serves to make it all worse. “Tonight? Like old times?”

Old times. It feels so much longer ago than just one year. Jaemin isn’t the same person he was then. None of them are. Yet it’s really only been one year, one year to this exact date, though he’s been ignoring that all day.

“No,” he says sharply. “I don’t care what day it is. I don’t care what our parents do. Tonight, I’m going to sit alone in my room and do homework, and you’re gonna sit at home and do...whatever it is you do.”

“Look, I know what you’ve been through. I know better than anyone, Jaemin, even you! But we can do this. I’m not saying it has to be the same, or even that you have to like it, but is it really so bad for us all to talk again?”

“Have you even asked anyone else? What did they say?”

Mark deflates. Jaemin is still tense, coiled tight and ready to snap at any moment, but as he watches Mark turn back into the empty shell he sometimes spots in the corridors, he feels guilt and victory curling inside him.

“I was planning to. I was always gonna ask you first, though. The Nexus meeting is being held at your house tonight, right?”

It is, as Jaemin’s parents have reminded him every five seconds for the past five days.

Jaemin’s parents, as Oceanside’s richest and finest, hold annual charity gatherings. It’s been a thing since long before Jaemin was even a thought in their minds. They’d formed Nexus with six other couples, all impressive people in their own right.

Jaemin had never minded the charity gatherings. He was never allowed to take part in the actual events, but just like Jaemin’s own parents, the other six couples had popped out kids around the same time. The gatherings were a good excuse to hang out with his friends, playing games and eating junk food.

The gatherings always switch between one of the couples’ homes, and this year it’s Jaemin’s parents turn. This year, he also has no plans to hang out with anyone.

“What? You were gonna use my agreement to try and stronghold the others into coming?” He scoffs.

Mark doesn’t say anything, and that in turn says everything.

Jaemin pulls the door open again. This conversation is clearly over. Still, despite how he’s been waiting to escape since he first walked in, he hesitates.

“Forget about us, Mark. I know it’s not my place to say this, but it’s never going to be the same again. I’m sorry.”

He doesn’t wait for Mark’s reply before he lets the door close.

Through math class, he’s distracted. He tries to forget the encounter with Mark, but it’s harder than it should be. He’s over what happened to their group. It’s not his problem anymore. That part of his life is over, and best left behind.

If p=7, q=7 and j= pq -q -p then, j=35

If i=5 and q= i*4 then, q=20

If 2y=196 then, y=98

Jaemin doesn’t have any problems. Jaemin is fine.

He walks home. He never got around to getting his license — it didn’t seem worthwhile, anywhere he can walk he will walk, anywhere he can’t his parents are more than happy to drive him. It’s not as if he goes out much except for school anyway.

He half-listens to a bunch of playlists until he reaches his house. His mom’s Lexus is in the driveway. He could swear she was filming today, but she must have come home early for the meeting. That’s not a surprise, all the parents seem to take Nexus a lot more seriously than a once a year charity gig deserves.

He lets himself in and is greeted by soft music and the smell of something sweet. He follows the smell to the kitchen, finding both his parents and his cat.

He scoops Laveau up in his arms — she’s a tiny, black thing, barely bigger than a kitten despite being at least two. She meows at him, looking up at him with her big green eyes, before beginning an attempt to climb up his hoodie.

“Jaemin, hi sweetie!” His mom sing-songs, pulling a tray out of the oven. “I made oatmeal-raisin bites, they’re for the meeting tonight but I don’t mind if you sneak one before.”

“Honey!” His dad gasps in mock-outrage. He’s sat at the island, reading over something: maybe a script, maybe accounting reports, maybe one of those old comic books he likes. “I’m telling the rest of Nexus on you.”

“Oh, as if you would.”  his mother laughs, pecking her husband on the cheek.

“Honey, not in front our son.”

“I’m sixteen, Dad. I think I know by now that you and Mom kiss.” Jaemin snorts.

“Goodness, you really are growing up so fast,” his dad shakes his head. “Feels like just yesterday you were born.”

“Your birth got me and your father on the cover of three different magazines,” his mother reminisces.

“I know, Mom, you tell that story all the time.” He steals an oatmeal-raisin bar off the tray as she walks past, Laveau safe on his shoulders now she’s reached her destination.

“So, honey, any plans for tonight?” She asks, not even attempting subtlety despite her career path.

“Homework.” He shrugs.

She hums. “It’s not too late for your friends to still come over. Mrs. Park called me earlier and said she’s not sure about leaving Jisung home alone.”

“He’s fourteen, not four,” Jaemin says, then: “They’re not my friends anymore.”

His dad shakes his head. “I’m sure you kids would make up in no time if you all just tried, but...if you want to do homework then what kind of parents would we be if we stopped you?”

“The worst parents in the world.” He laughs. “I’m gonna go get started on my homework. Have fun tonight.”

He plucks Laveau off his shoulders and cradles the tiny cat in his arms again. When he reaches his room, he plops her down on the floor and collapses on the bed.

“This is gonna be the worst. Night. Ever,” he says empathetically.

She meows in sympathy...or maybe hunger, he’s not sure which.

Four hours later, he’s finished his homework and finds he can’t focus enough to study anymore, Instead, he digs his old DS out from his bedside drawer and loads up Pokémon.

He’s _this_ close to catching Volcarona when he hears his dad shout from downstairs.

“Jaemin, dear, come downstairs for a moment.” He sighs, pausing the game.

He has no idea what his dad wants him downstairs for. Judging by the time, his parents’ guests should be arriving right around now. Maybe he needs help ferrying organic snacks to the event room, or there’s not enough room on the rack for all the faux-fur coats and he wants Jaemin to stash some in the closet.

Getting to his feet, he finds Laveau halfway up the side of the duvet. He pries her off and sets her on the floor.

“We talked about this,” he says, in the most serious voice he can muster. “No pets on the furniture.”

She nips at the finger he’s pointing in her face. He would like to interpret this as ‘Yes, beloved father, I apologise for my behaviour’ but it probably means ‘Bold of you to assume the bed is yours and not rightfully mine, peasant’.

“I’ll be back in a moment,” he tells her. “Don’t claw anything to shreds while I’m gone.”

Briefly, he wonders if having conversations with his cat is a sign of how lonely he is. He quickly shakes off that thought. He’s not lonely.

The walk downstairs is strangely nerve-wracking. He doesn’t know why, considering he makes this trip multiple times a day. He goes from his room to downstairs to leave for school, to get food, to join his mom and dad for family night. He has no idea what’s causing the trepidation in his stomach, at least not until he’s halfway down the stairs.

Standing at the bottom of the stairs, sandwiched between a man and a woman in business suits, is a boy, playing a game on his phone that he obviously considers more important than what’s going on around him.

“The Parks brought Jisung, isn’t that lovely?” His father beams.

That is, needless to say, not lovely. That is, quite frankly, the opposite of lovely. It’s awful, it’s unfair, it’s... _bullshit_ . They had an agreement, albeit a silent one, but still an agreement. They don’t hang out on weekends, they don’t talk to each other in school, and they _definitely_ don’t come to Nexus meetings.

“Yeah, that’s wonderful,” Jaemin says. There’s a knife-sharp edge to his smile— he never did quite take to acting like his parents, though he isn’t half bad when he really tries.

Jisung doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t even look up from his phone. The doorbell rings again.

“Oh, that must be the Zhongs,” Jaemin’s mother exclaims, entering from the living room. “You know how they like to be on time.”

“Surprising.” Mr Park laughs. “You’d think they’d be caught up in one of those inventions of theirs, that’s always what Lifu says when I invite him round for poker nights.”

“He probably just doesn’t want to bet money against one of the best financial brokers in the city,” Jaemin’s dad says.

His mom opens the door. Mr and Mrs Zhong enter, both still wearing lab coats over their shirts and black pants combos. Jaemin had asked about why some of the other parents dress so strangely, back when he was a child, and they’d said something he doesn’t remember now, and doesn’t think made any sense to him back when he was six going on seven.

Jaemin doesn’t realise they’ve also brought their son with them until he’s barely two inches in front of his face, lightly tugging at his dangling earring.

“Woah, when did you get your ears pierced? That’s so cool! Did it hurt?”

“Chenle,” Jaemin says, measured. “What are you doing here?”

“We hang out here every year, why wouldn’t I be here?” he says, like everything is the same as it used to be. “Besides, Mark said I should be here, not that I wasn’t going to anyway.”

“Mark?” Jaemin’s blood runs cold, heart dropping into his stomach, the conversation from earlier flashing at the front of his mind. “He’s not coming here, right?”

Jaemin had talked him down. He must have done. Jisung, he can handle— Jisung clearly doesn’t want to be in this situation any more than Jaemin. Even Chenle, he could put up with— the kid is a little too much sometimes, but he wouldn’t bring up anything from their past that Jaemin is steadily avoiding.

The doorbell rings.

Jaemin wants to run back to his room and never come out.

He thinks that Mark being on the other side of that door is the worst possible thing that could happen.

The door opens, and he’s quickly proven wrong.

First, the adults shuffle in, kissing each other’s cheeks and making small talk about PTAs and fundraising or whatever adults talk about when they’re together.

Four teenagers walk in after. Leading the troop, unsurprisingly, is Mark. He walks in with confidence, like he belongs here, and Jaemin wonders what happened to that scared boy in the bathroom.

Following directly behind him is Lee Donghyuck. He looks around with a bored expression, popping bubblegum.

Huang Renjun walks in next, his look of disinterest even more scathing than Donghyuck’s. Donghyuck’s was directed at the situation at large, Renjun’s seems aimed directly at Jaemin.

Lee Jeno walks in last, wearing a nervous smile. He doesn’t know what the smile means. He never does anymore.

“Hey, Jaemin,” Mark says, “I know you said—“

“Well, isn’t this just lovely?” Jaemin’s mom coos. “The gang’s all here! And aren’t you all growing up so well?”

“Why don’t you kids head to the game room?” His dad says. “We’ll order you pizza before our meeting starts.”

Jaemin is stuck. His feet feel glued to the floor. It’s a little like time travel— like this is a year, two years, ten years ago. Except the image is all wrong. Nobody’s smiling, nobody’s talking, and Jaemin feels a heavy weight dragging him down and nerves swirling in his stomach.

It’s Mark who starts heading towards the game room. Jaemin doesn’t want to go, but their parents are right there, watching them with hope in their eyes, and he moves on autopilot.

He hasn’t been in the game room since last year. Unsurprisingly, it remains unchanged— soft chairs and sofas and beanbags pointing towards a huge LED smart TV, connected to every game console imaginable.

Jaemin doesn’t know where they go from here. Chenle has no such qualms, flopping down onto a beanbag with a grin on his face.

“Isn’t this great?” He asks. “The gang’s all back together!”

Jisung finally looks up from his phone. “My parents dragged me here, for the record.”

Jeno shrugs. “Lacrosse practice was cancelled tonight. Mark said we should hang out, I didn’t have anything better to do.”

“And Mark practically accosted me after school, begging me to be here. I said yes to get him off my back...In exchange for him bringing me a chai cream frappuccino every day for the next year,” Renjun says, examining his painted nails.

Donghyuck sits himself on the sofa, offering no explanation for why he’s here and grabbing the remote.

“I...live here?” Jaemin offers weakly.

Mark shakes his head. “Look, this doesn’t have to be weird. I know this past year has been rough for all of us but...was it really necessary to argue and fall apart? It’s not as if this was any of our faults.”

“That’s not what you said before,” Jeno says quietly.

Mark swallows, jaw trembling. “I think we all said things we didn’t mean. My point is...we...I missed you guys...and there’s something I really need to talk to you about…”

“What? You make a speech and expect us to all hug it out because of the power of friendship? We’re not five years old anymore, Mark, and we didn’t fall out because someone stole Jeno’s candy bar.”

“That was one time,” Donghyuck whines from the sofa. Jaemin is surprised he was even listening, having now discarded the remote for a magazine left on the table. He seems unnervingly nonchalant about this whole thing.

 _Everyone_ seems more put together than Jaemin, even though he thinks that they should all be five seconds from breaking down by now.

Maybe he has a problem.

“I—“ Mark starts.

“Mark,” Jeno says softly. “Maybe you should just give it up. No matter what happened, we were bound to grow apart. The only reason we ever became friends was because of our parents’ stupid Nexus meetings.”

“Yeah,” Jaemin says. His voice is a little shaky. He hopes it doesn’t show. “What childhood friends still get along when they’re teenagers? We’re hardly the same people we were when we were kids.”

“They’re right,” Jisung adds. “I’m like _way_ too cool for all of you now.”

Chenle pouts. “Even me, Jisungie?”

It’s true. Being a teenager is fundamentally different to being a child. When you’re a kid, a friend is anyone willing to play a game of hide and seek with you. But when you hit high school? Cliques start to form, rules start to be imposed and you have to learn them to stay alive, and associating with anyone who isn’t in your socially improved circle could turn into social suicide. It’s annoyingly complicated, but it’s what happens, and as far as Jaemin can tell it only gets worse in adulthood.

“Maybe that’s true for some people, but not us. We were more than that,” Mark insists.

“They’re not gonna listen, Mark,” Donghyuck shrugs. “So how about we just get tonight over with, ignore each other as best as we can, and wait for that pizza?”

It’s the only logical thing Jaemin has heard all night, and he clutches onto it like a lifesaver.

“I have Netflix,” he says, sitting on a different sofa than Donghyuck. Netflix is good. Netflix doesn’t bring up old wounds. Netflix doesn’t remind him of the gaping hole in his heart once filled by six other boys.

Everyone finally sits down, leaving as much space between them and the next person as possible. Thanks to Jaemin’s huge house and the excess of seating, that’s actually quite a lot.

Someone turns on the TV and brings up the familiar black and red menu. He doesn’t recognise the show that gets chosen, but it doesn’t matter. He’s not paying any attention to it. Now that everything has sort of settled down, he’s suddenly exhausted in every way possible. He lets the sound of the TV and the silence of his old friends surround him as his eyes close of their own volition.

 

* * *

 

Jaemin wakes up an unknown amount of time later. It’s that kind of waking up that takes a while, your half conscious mind still trapped in a dream. His eyelids flutter, not quite making up their minds. It’s only when he hears the screaming he realises that he’s awake.

“I didn’t know, okay!”

“So? You should have been more careful!”

“ _How_? I didn’t know he’d freak out!”

“How could he _not?!”_

Opening his eyes reveals Jeno and Donghyuck, locked in a screaming match. Well, Donghyuck is screaming, Jeno is pacing and running his hands through his hair like he’d rather be doing anything but this.

Jisung and Chenle are nowhere to be seen.

Mark is shaking like a small, helpless animal trapped in a hurricane.

On the TV, the detective says: _‘Your brother...he’s gone. I’m so sorry.’_

He sees all this in seconds and puts it together in less.

He wishes he’d stayed asleep.

“Shut up, both of you,” he bites.

Finding the remote, he switches the TV off. It means nothing to Mark, who may have not even been hearing it anymore, but it’s a blessing to Jaemin. Between the screaming, the TV, and the faint music leaking in from the party downstairs, he can’t think.

“Where are the kids?” He says sharply, then winces at the way he’s fallen into his old habit of calling them ‘ _the kids’_

Donghyuck and Jeno finally snap out of their anger, looking around like they didn’t notice Chenle and Jisung we’re missing until Jaemin said as much. He wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t, clearly they’d found something more important to do in arguing while Mark broke down in the corner.

“I—“ Jeno says

“They were right here a minute ago,” Donghyuck stresses.

“They snuck out like ten minutes ago,” Renjun pipes up from the sofa. Unlike anyone and everyone else in the room, he seems totally calm.

“We need to find them,” Jaemin says.

“What for? They’re just around the house somewhere, it’s not like they’ve been missing for forty eight hours.”

“You know as well as I do that we are _not_ supposed to leave this room, or wherever else our parents stick us, during Nexus meetings. They’re gonna totally freak!”

“That sounds like a ‘you’ problem,” Renjun says.

Jaemin climbs to his feet, anger building inside him.

“It is an _us_ problem! Your parents will kill you if they find Jisung and Chenle wandering around. We’re...back in the day, we were responsible for them, remember?”

“Yeah, when they were like...twelve.”

“Jaemin’s right,” Jeno says, curling his arms around his torso. “I don’t wanna deal with getting in trouble. God, I knew coming here was a bad idea.”

“You guys do what you want.” Donghyuck rolls his eyes. “I’m staying here and looking after Mark, y’know, since none of _you_ seem to care he’s having a panic attack on the floor.”

“He’s not our friend,” Jaemin, Renjun and Jeno say at the same time.

Donghyuck ignores them, heading over to the corner and crouching in front of Mark. Jaemin watches them for a moment. Mark still looks pale and shaken, but his eyes seem to clear as Donghyuck whispers to him. There’s something _wrong_ about the scene, but Jaemin can’t worry about that right now. He turns back to face both Jeno and Renjun instead.

“They can’t have gone far. Well, probably not, our parents would have caught them by now if they were downstairs. Let’s split up and search this floor. If we don’t find them, we head up.”

“Who died and made you captain?” Renjun snorts, but gets to his feet and heads towards the door.

Once he’s in the hallway and the other two have headed off in separate directions, Jaemin stops to breathe for a moment, running his hands through his hair.

He doesn’t miss the way things used to be, he swears he doesn’t, but he does wish they were as simple as they used to be. If they were all still friends, Chenle would be busy trying to beat Jaemin’s high scores on whatever game they were obsessed with that year while Jisung would provide distractions and ask if they could play Mario Kart instead. They wouldn’t have run away, because they would have been more than happy where they were.

But dwelling on that will get him nowhere. Right now, he just needs to find Chenle and Jisung and hope that the Nexus meeting finishes not long after so he can finally have the house to himself again and everything can go back to normal.

He checks all the spare bedrooms first, but nothing greets him except darkness and that stale smell that comes from no humans disrupting the air flow. He checks the mini library, then the home gym— still nothing.

Finally, he checks his own bedroom. It’s empty, except for the little bundle of black fur on the bed.

“Laveau,” he whines. “I am too stressed to tell you off right now, but as soon as I sort this out, we will be having words, young lady,”

Laveau looks up at him with imploring eyes, bounces onto her paws, and elegantly jumps to the ground.

“I caught you in the act.” He glares.

Laveau raises her head indignantly, like she has better things to do than listen to him. She probably does, it seems like a running theme today.

He closes the door, vowing to sneak Laveau some leftover salmon tonight. Though she spends most of her time in his room out of her own free will, he always feels bad practically locking her in there on Nexus meeting nights, and it’s worse this time since he’s not even with her.

Reaching the stairs to the second floor, he runs into Jeno who’s been searching the other half of this floor.

“No sign of them,” Jeno says. “You?”

Jaemin shakes his head.

Renjun appears at the top of the stairs. “Well, don’t bother checking upstairs. I already did and there’s no one up there.”

“You already checked all of it?” Jeno frowns, in the same puppy-like way he always does when he’s confused. For a moment, something stirs inside Jaemin, but he quickly pushes it down.

“Some of us actually know how to be efficient. There was no reason for all three of us to check this floor. The house isn’t _that_ big after all. I thought we should cover more ground.”

Jaemin ignores the dig at his house. Renjun’s is only ridiculously big because his parents designed it themselves. The most sought after architects in the city with an unlimited budget, of course they’d give themselves the best house in the whole area.

“That only leaves the ground floor,” Jaemin breathes.

“But wouldn’t our parents have noticed by now if they were downstairs? And they would have brought them straight back to the game room, right?”

“It doesn’t make any sense..” Jaemin says.

“Sense or not, it’s the only option. So, either we go down there and look for them, or we leave them to get in trouble by themselves. I know my vote, but I doubt either of you would agree,” Renjun snaps.

“Just...let me think for a second,” Jeno says.

“Wasn’t aware you knew how to do that.” Renjun sighs.

If they go down there, then there’s even more chance of their parents catching one of them. Maybe Chenle and Jisung have managed to sneak past them— if they avoid the event room, and aren’t loud enough to be heard over the music, then maybe everything will be fine and they’ll eventually walk back to the game room and Chenle will tell them all about whatever objectively boring adventure they went on.

If Jaemin, Jeno and Renjun go down there then they’re more likely to be found out. But the meeting should be ending soon, and if their parents come back to the game room to find two people missing, they’ll all be grounded for the rest of the year.

That doesn’t mean much to Jaemin, it’s not like he goes anywhere, but it’s his parents disapproval that will hurt.

“Okay...I think we should go down there and look for them,” Jeno finally says.

“Yeah, me too,” Jaemin adds.

“I knew it. Well, let’s go, then.”

The music is louder down here, even when still filtered through the closed door of the event room. It’s easy to see how Jisung and Chenle could sneak around in retrospect.

Out of some silent agreement, they don’t split up this time. The ground floor doesn’t have as many rooms as the upper floors, instead dedicating the space to having larger rooms. It’s the living room, kitchen, dining room, one bathroom, and the event room.

The living room is a bust (‘Mountain green feature wall? I’m sure my parents are crying as we speak.’)

They find nothing in the kitchen. (‘Sweet! Veggie sliders...what? Don’t judge me. Your parents only ordered three pizzas.’)

The dining room is empty. (‘Dining rooms are a capitalist invention.’ ‘We live in Oceanside, it’s a capitalist invention in itself.’)

Standing in bathrooms with his old friends is becoming a weird theme in his life. They don’t even find Jisung and Chenle in there to make it worth it. (‘This is weird, can we leave now?’ ‘Yep.’ ‘Definitely.’)

“I don’t get it.” Jaemin paces the hall. “Where the hell can they be?”

“Maybe we just missed them?” Jeno suggests.

“Yeah, we probably wasted a bunch of time and they’re back in the game room, laughing at us with Mark and Hyu— with Mark and Donghyuck.”

Loud laughter interrupts them. The laughter is familiar, painfully so. It’s also coming from behind the door of the event room.

“No,” Jaemin says. “There is no way—“

Jeno is already walking towards the door.

“They can’t be in there. That doesn’t make any sense.”

Jeno’s hand grips the doorknob.

“Jeno, seriously.”

He opens the door.

Renjun walks towards the door, joining Jeno as they stare into the room. Jaemin follows, annoyance in every step. He knows that they can’t be in there. Any moment, their parents are going to notice their presence, and this whole thing is going to be self-sabotage, just another thing for them all to resent each other for.

“Guys! Check it out! We found Jaemin’s dad’s chocolate stash!”

Chenle is grinning brightly as he pops up from behind the counter. Jisung is sat on said counter, swinging his legs with a half-demolished chocolate bar in his hand.

Other than them, the room is empty.

He hasn’t been in the event room often. It’s bigger than he remembers, with a long stretch of polished floor covered in an intricate rug, two counters at separate ends of the room that probably act as bars and/or snack tables, and the best music system in the house. Music is blasting from the speakers now, the same as he could hear from upstairs, but he realises now that it’s not playing anything his parents would he caught dead listening to, but Spotify’s cheesy hits playlist.

“Where have you been?”

“Where are our parents?”

“Give me some chocolate!”

Renjun, Jeno and Jaemin all yell at the same time. It’s a wonder anyone can work out what they’re saying, but Chenle seems to have no problem with it.

“You guys were being awkward and boring, so we went on an adventure. I don’t know where our parents are. Do you want nougat, peanut butter or plain?”

“Nougat,” Jaemin says. He’s always been the type to stress eat, and right now his stress levels equate to an entire candy store. Chenle is lucky he doesn’t just grab all three.

“This...doesn’t make any sense,” Jeno says, looking around. Chenle throws Jaemin the chocolate bar and he opens it at the speed of light. “Our parents are supposed to be in here, right?”

“We only opened the door because we were gonna peek in and see whatever lame shit they get up to...entirely Chenle’s idea, by the way. But when we did, it was empty, there was just some awful jazz music playing in an empty room.” Jisung explains, mouth still full of chocolate.

“Well, this is a good thing, right?” Jaemin laughs nervously. “We didn’t get caught, so we should go, before they come back and we inevitably do get caught.”

“This is just plain weird,” Renjun mutters. “Why would our parents lie to us about where they were?”

“Who’s lying to us about what?”

The voice from behind them makes Jaemin jump, which makes Donghyuck, the person suddenly standing behind him, laugh.

“Dude,” he says through his giggles. “Your face.”

“What are you doing down here?” Jaemin hisses. “Aren’t you meant to be looking after Mark?”

“Uh, hey,” Mark says, walking out from behind the wall so Jaemin can see him. “I’m uh...sorry about that. I didn’t mean to freak out.”

“Yes! Now it’s a real party!” Chenle cheers.

“Well, it’s a party we should move back upstairs. Come on, kid,” Mark replies.

“As long as we can take the chocolate, I don’t care,” Jisung says, planting his feet back on the ground.

“If we’re gonna go upstairs you’re all just gonna start fighting again! Or even worse, _ignoring_ each other!” Chenle argues. “Why can’t we just stay here and have fun?”

“No offence but what’s so fun about this big empty room?”

“Well...there’s music here!” Chenle rushes over to the sound system and turns the volume up, the sounds of 80’s pop almost drowning his next words out. “And chocolate! And...I don’t know, okay? I just...want us to be friends again.”

“We can be friends upstairs,” Mark says, at the same time Jaemin says, “We’re never gonna be friends again.”

Mark turns to look at him harshly. “Why are you so against this? I know what happened but is it...is it really worth giving up everything we had?”

Jaemin laughs. “You all certainly thought it was! I texted you everyday, I tried to talk to you all in class or in the hallways but it was always ‘Not now’ or ‘I need to be alone’.”

“You can’t blame people for needing to be alone!”

“Well _I_ needed someone there! But instead I had nothing...and I’m used to it now. So you guys need to face the facts, our friendship disappeared right along with Johnny.”

Jaemin doesn’t have to look away from Mark to know that everyone’s face has fallen in one way or another. Mark’s expression is stony, jaw clenched, but they’ve known each other since they were in diapers, it’s not hard for Jaemin to be able look past that and find the pain in his eyes.

They don’t say his name. Jaemin’s probably the first one of them to, and he instantly regrets it.

Johnny had been adopted by Mark’s parents a year before Mark himself. He’d always been older than them, brought into the family as a child instead of a baby, but that didn’t stop them all growing up together anyway. Johnny had been there every Nexus meeting, keeping an eye on the younger kids and beating them at video games. He’d had friends his own age, but he still spent a lot of time with them. He was Mark’s brother, but really he was like an older brother to all them.

A year ago, right after the last Nexus meeting, he disappeared without a trace,

In the weeks that followed, they fell apart in every way possible.

And now they’re like this. They don’t have Johnny. They don’t have each other.

And if Jaemin had to live like that for a year, if he had to suffer alone, then why should he change things now?

After all, he’s doing fine.

Mark lets out a soft breath. His eyes close. “I missed you,” he says.

“I missed all of you,” Chenle says.

“Look,” Jeno says, making his way towards Chenle “If we promise we’ll talk upstairs then can we please just—“

_Bang._

Whatever Jeno was going to say, it’s firmly and rudely interrupted by him tripping over the edge of the rug and falling to the ground.

“Ouch.” Donghyuck winces in sympathy.

“Are you okay?” Mark asks, reaching out for him.

“Yeah...yeah, I’m fine,” Jeno shakes his head. “Just kind of...uhhh...is the floor supposed to look like that?”

Jaemin, understandably confused about why Jeno is insulting his floor, follows his gaze to the spot he’s staring at. Jeno’s fall had kicked a bit of the carpet backwards, revealing the floor it was once covering. It all looks fine, normal, really, until Jaemin spots the little metal ring that’s firmly attached to a square of hardwood floor.

If Jaemin was crazy, he’d say it was a—

“Is that a trapdoor?” Donghyuck asks.

They’re all crowded around it now, staring at the patch of floor like it’s the most interesting thing they’ve ever seen.

“Why would my parents have a— “

Donghyuck grabs the metal ring and pulls, lifting up a square of the floor and revealing the flight of stairs beneath.

“It’s a trapdoor,” Donghyuck gasps.

“ _Why_ would my parents have a trapdoor?” Jaemin practically shouts.

“Do you have a basement?” Renjun asks, kneeling next to the hole in the floor.

“I...don’t think so?”

“You don’t _think_ so?” Renjun sends him a flat look. “You have lived here your entire life.”

“And in my entire life I’ve never seen a basement.”

“What do you think is down there?” Jeno frowns.

“Camping equipment?”

“A beating heart that will slowly drive us mad?”

“Our parents?”

Jaemin shifts his gaze over to Mark. “You think our parents are just hanging out in the basement?”

“Well, we thought they’d be here, and they’re not, so...maybe?”

“Well...there’s only one way to find out.” With zero preamble, Donghyuck squeezes past them and starts walking down the stairs.

“Hyuck!” Mark shouts after him. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Exploring! What else are you supposed to do when you find a trap door?” They can’t see Donghyuck anymore, but his voice is clear so he can’t have gone too far.

“He has a point.” Chenle grins, and follows after him.

Jaemin slumps into a sigh. “This is ridiculous,” he says. Briefly, he wonders how a night of studying and playing old video games went so wrong, but then he remembers that it went wrong the moment these guys showed up, because that’s just what they do.

“Well...if everyone else is doing it.” Jeno laughs, and disappears down the stairs after Donghyuck and Chenle.

Renjun scowls. “Someone has to make sure those idiots don’t die, I guess. Let’s go.” Under Renjun’s gaze, the rest of them reluctantly follow.

It’s not as dark as Jaemin was expecting it to be. The stairs lead to a long, stone corridor lit up with wall lamps every few feet. There doesn’t seem to be anything down here, at least not as far as Jaemin can see. It’s spacious enough, at least, they barely have to cramp together to make sure they all fit.

“Are we sure this is a basement? Looks more like a dungeon,” Renjun says.

“Didn’t your parents design like half the houses in this city? If anyone should know it’s you,” Donghyuck counters.

“It’s not like I pay attention to their work. Do _you_ listen when your parents start rants about Napoleon or whatever?”

“Is that all you’ve picked up in three years of my dad’s classes?”

“That and his annoying fondness for puns, yes.”

While Donghyuck and Renjun argue, Jeno and Chenle are moving ahead. Jaemin, deciding to take his chances that they’ll be less annoying, follows.

Jaemin grew up in a big house, but this corridor still feels ridiculously long. It’s eerie, walking and walking with nothing to suggest you’ve moved except for the ache in your muscles, and no end in sight.

They shouldn’t be down here. Jaemin can’t crush that feeling, even as he keeps moving forward. He never knew his house had a basement, he doesn’t know why there would be a trapdoor in the event room, he doesn’t understand anything.

No one else seems to share his worries. Donghyuck, Jeno and Chenle are treating this as an adventure. Jisung is complaining there’s no signal down here. Renjun just seems bored, and Mark is quiet again.

They walk, and walk, and Jaemin isn’t sure why they’re doing it anymore other than no one wanting to be the one to say they should be going back. They walk, and walk, and eventually they reach a door.

The doors in his house are furnished wood or glass-panelled. They’re good doors, respectable doors, doors he isn’t sure if it would have been better or worse to see down here. Instead, the door that greets them is stone. Old, solid but weathered. There’s something carved into it, a little above Jaemin’s line of sight. A symbol, swirls and lines, that sparks a sense of recognition in him though he can’t recall the memory.

He doesn’t know who pushes it open, but someone does, and one by one they walk through in silence.

They’re suspended in mid-air, or at least it feels that way for a moment. In truth, they’re on a balcony of sorts, one spanning the entire width of the room. Below them, they can see their parents, and Jaemin’s breath catches in confusion.

After the dark and empty hallway, the stone door, and even the rough stone of what they’re standing on, he expect the room below to be the same way. It isn’t. Instead, it looks like it wouldn’t be out of place in his own home: White walls, bright lighting, a long table and chairs. There’s a desk against one wall, neatly stacked with papers. The walls are lined with bookshelves that are stuffed full of old, leather bound books.

Their parents sit at the table. He finds his dad first, laughing at something Mr. Zhong had said. His mom sits a few chairs away, a colourful cocktail in one hand.

It’s startling in its normalcy.

“What the hell?” Donghyuck says.

Everyone moves to shush him, but when they look back at their parents they don’t seem to have noticed anything amiss. From below, Jisung’s mom says: “Lifu, any new information to share?”

Chenle’s dad stands up from his place at the table, letting out a small cough as he fumbles with the papers in his hand. “I think we have a good deal on the horizon with the Wong family. They’re very interested in buying those latest prototypes of the weapons we discussed.”

“Weapons?” Chenle screeches.

Again, despite the volume, their parents don’t even blink.

Jaemin, heart jackhammering in his chest, says “I don’t think they can hear us.”

“How? We’re only a few feet above them!”

If asked later, he wouldn’t be able to explain what draws him to reach out into the emptiness now. He doesn’t know if it’s just a normal reaction, or if he can sense that something is there. Either way, he reaches out into the air above the railing.

His hand meets resistance. According to his eyes, there’s nothing there, but something still holds him back. Whatever it is, it feels warm, almost soft, not a solid surface but instead slipping around his fingers like gelatine, fluid yet immovable.

“We’re pretty sure the designs are perfected now. Me and my husband will work on production in the coming weeks and keep you all updated.” Chenle’s mom’s voice draws him out of his reverie.

“Wonderful!” His mom says, taking a long sip of her drink. “If that’s everything covered, then I believe it’s time for the main event.”

As if on cue, they all stand up. Jaemin’s dad slips across the room, opening a door Jaemin hasn’t noticed before as it blended so well with the walls.

A young man stumbles through it, so off-kilter that his dad ends up catching him in his arms and holding his back against his chest.

“Wh-where am I?” The man breathes out. Really, Jaemin isn’t sure if ‘man’ is the right identifier. He looks so young, probably not much older than Jaemin himself.

“Shhh,” his dad whispers to the boy. “You’re not on the streets anymore, you can relax.”

This doesn’t seem to calm the boy at all. Really, the words may not even be going through. There’s a glazed look in his eyes showing that, for whatever reason, he’s not quite _there_.

“Where did you find this one, Lee?”

“What the _hell_ is going on?” Renjun hisses.

“I...don’t know. This feels weird.” Jisung wraps his arms around his torso, taking a step back.

“Passed out in alleyway somewhere. Drugs, probably. You know what kids are like these days.”

Donghyuck’s dad always gives Jaemin a wide, friendly smile whenever he sees him in the school hallways. When Jaemin was seven, he cried when he dropped his ice cream cone and so Mr.Lee bought him an extra large double scoop to replace it and told him awful knock knock jokes until he smiled again. Listening to his cold, indifferent voice now, Jaemin can’t believe he’s looking at the same person.

“Well, let's just get this over with. Knowing what the kids have been like lately, who knows how much longer they can stand to be in each other’s company,” Mr Park says.

“Oh, I’m sure they’ll get over that soon. They’ll have to, if everything is going to go according to plan. If they don’t, then we’ll intervene,” Mrs Park counters.

“Still, we should get back to them before they kill each other. It’s getting late, anyway.”

Jaemin watches as his dad leads the boy in his arms to the middle of the room. Their parents follow, surrounding him from all sides.

“Let go of me!” The boy pants, thrashing in his hold. “Stay away!”

Jaemin’s dad sighs, heavy, the same sigh Jaemin hears when he forgets to clean his room or talks back at dinner.

“It’s so very annoying when they struggle. Keep him still would you, darling?” He directs towards Jaemin’s mom.

For some reason, his mom starts rifling through the book she’s still holding. Jaemin doesn’t know what she’s looking for, but she seems to find it quickly, and starts reading aloud. He doesn’t know what she says and he doesn’t have much time to figure it out before Mrs Park interrupts.

“Please, let me. It will be much quicker.” She waves her arm in a harsh, intentional manner. Next to him, Jisung gasps, and the boy in his father's hold screams, but Jaemin doesn’t see what happened, his view blocked by the huddle of their parents.

“Show-off.” His mother rolls her eyes.

What happens next seems to happen all too quickly and all too slowly all at once. One moment, his father reaches for something on the table. The next, there’s a glint of silver in the light. For the single longest moment in history, a curved blade is dragged along a young boy’s neck and blood begins to spill.

Jaemin can’t look away. He’s transfixed, watching dark crimson spill down an already filthy white shirt. His father moves away, letting the boy crumple to the ground like he’s nothing. He wipes his hand on his suit, puts his knife down, and finishes his drink.

The boy wheezes for air, a sick, _wet_ sound that Jaemin’s never heard the likes of before. As he lies dying, Jaemin watches his face, betrayal and fear sparking through his eyes like an explosion. He knows the boy can’t see him, but he still swears they meet eyes as the light in his goes out for good.

There’s another sick, wet sound as next to him as Renjun throws up olive and jalapeño pizza.

Someone is crying, maybe it’s him.

“We need to get out of here,” Mark says.

Jaemin runs and never looks back.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, so obviously I didn't intend to go seven months without updating when I started this fic. I won't bore you with the details, but a LOT has gone on in my life in the last seven months. Some good, most bad, a few bad but will eventually lead to good, y'know the drill. So, if you read this back when chapter one was first posted, I'm sorry, and I'm slowly starting to get my shit together finally, the evidence of which is this chapters existence. Lets get this show on the road, folks.

Renjun is aware of the acid taste of vomit in his mouth. He is aware of the breath in his lungs— harsh pull in, shallow breath out. He is aware of the sound of feet pounding against the floor as he runs, as they all run. 

He focuses on these things so he doesn’t have to focus on what he just saw. 

Despite how long the hallway felt as they walked down in the first time, they find themselves falling back into the event room before Renjun even realises how far they’ve come.

“Back to the game room. Let’s go.” Mark breathes.

Renjun’s palms sting as he pushes himself back to his feet. He lets it be another thing he focuses on as he follows the others through the house. Doors and walls and paintings all pass by in a blur, then they’re in the game room. It looks exactly the same as it did when they left it, and of course it _should_ but it feels wrong that it _does_.

He ends up on the sofa and a controller is thrust into his hands. On the screen, the super smash bros logo flashes. 

Renjun takes a breath.

“What the fuck,” he says.

The sofa is soft and cushiony. The controller is solid in his hands. He just watched someone die. He just watched his parents kill someone.

“What the fuck,” he says again.

Now that it’s safe to think, now that there’s nowhere left to run, the scene hits his mind in technicolour, playing on repeat. He blinks, reminding himself of his surroundings. 

There are six teenagers gathered on these sofas. They’re all different, practically strangers despite their shared past, but right now they all have the same haunted look in their eyes.

“What...what just happened?” Chenle asks. He’s holding his knees against his chest, a pale attempt at comfort.

“It can’t be as bad as what we’re thinking!” Jeno says quickly. “I’m sure it was just—“

“Just what?” Donghyuck spits. “Just our parents brutally murdering someone?” Under the venom, the judgement, his voice is shaky and unsure.

“They wouldn’t do that! They’re our _parents_. How can you think they’re killers?” Jeno shouts back. 

“Well I only started to think that when they shoved a knife into some kid they’d abducted!”

“That’s _not_ what happened! They were probably just...filming something! Jaemin’s parents are actors, right? Maybe they were rehearsing a scene!”

“Jeno, I know it’s hard for you, but please try not to be an idiot.” Renjun is surprised by the sound of his own voice. He hadn’t meant to say anything, hadn’t even been aware he was thinking the words, yet his voice keeps coming, unbidden. “You saw exactly what the rest of us did. Our parents just killed someone...and it doesn’t seem like it was the first time they’d done it either.”

He remembers standing in the catacombs, watching the scene unfold in front of him. It had taken him too long to realise something was wrong, precisely because their parents had made the whole affair seem so normal. It was... _routine_ to them. Something as dull and emotionless as loading up the dishwasher.

“That can’t be it!...Can it?” Chenle asks.

“It is,” Mark says. His voice is dull, emotionless.. “God, it all finally makes sense now. Okay...I need you guys to listen to me.”

Though they have no reason to, they all stop talking. They turn to Mark out of some long-ingrained instinct, and wait for him to continue. It’s ridiculous, Renjun thinks, even though he does the exact same thing.

“This is what I was trying to tell you guys. Well, not _this_ , but...I wanted us all to meet so I could tell you something. Johnny...everyone always says he disappeared without a trace, but that’s not true. He left me a letter.”

It’s telling, that after what they’ve just seen, such a seemingly innocuous thing makes a gasp ring out across the room.

“Why...why didn’t you tell us?” Jisung glares.

“Because...it made no sense.”

“Telling us that Johnny wasn’t dead in a ditch somewhere made NO SENSE?!”

“No.” Mark fiddles with the bracelet on his wrist — an old nervous habit. “Of course not. _The letter_ made no sense.”

“Well, things aren’t making sense a lot tonight.” Renjun snorts. “So, you may as well explain yourself.”

Mark starts digging in his pockets. It takes a while, but after he pulls out his wallet, keys, and half a pack of gum, he emerges with a sheet of paper. It’s folded up into a tiny square. As Mark unfolds it, Renjun can’t help but notice the pattern of little cartoon cupcakes with smiley faces.

“Mark,” he starts reading off the paper. Well, more like starts reciting from memory while he clutches the letter like a lifeline. “The first thing I want to say is that I’m sorry. I didn’t want to leave you, but I couldn’t take you with me either. One day, you might know why.  
Take care of Mom and Dad for me.”

It may be Mark talking, but Renjun can almost imagine Johnny hunched at his desk, scribbling the words down. It aches, in a strangely nice way — like sitting by a warm fire but getting burned in the process.

“USZXDVWKYIY”

For a moment, Renjun thinks he’s gone crazy. He couldn’t blame himself if he did, he just saw his parents kill someone and now he was sitting in an unsettlingly familiar house listening to one of his old best friends read a letter from his missing brother. Then he decides that even if he was crazy, Mark must be crazier, because he definitely just read out an incomprehensible keysmash of letters, enunciating each one. 

“... _Huh?”_ Jaemin asks. 

“Uh...Mark...you good?” Jeno asks. 

“It’s what it says!” Mark protests, like he already knew the reaction he would get. 

Renjun shakes his head. “Let me see that.” He marches over to Mark and snatches the letter from his hand. 

“Hey!” Mark protests, but doesn’t attempt to take it back. 

There’s less smiley cupcakes on this side, more room to write. He isn’t familiar enough with Johnny’s handwriting to recognise it, but he does know Mark’s from when they used to study together, reading through each other’s essays and making fun of the mistakes. 

He skims the letter, and at first he thinks Mark really has lost it, because he can’t see the meaningless compilation of characters. But, he looks a bit closer, and he spots it. It’s incredibly faint, written in pencil or silver pen, easy to miss if you’re not looking for it. 

“Huh. He’s right,” Renjun announces to the room.

“Can I have the letter back now?” Mark asks, and Renjun hands it over and heads to his seat. He needs to sit down. 

“But, what does it _mean?”_ Jisung demands. 

“Just let me keep reading!”

“Fine!”

“Remember what we talked about a few weeks ago? Remember that. Remember everything...UEVMSAJCVLKIGIU.”

“ _Again?”_ Jaemin whispers. 

Renjun tries not to smirk. 

“I believe I’m doing what’s right here. What’s right by Mom and Dad. What’s right by you. I really hope that I am...FRDZVFHTULHTEIYAGD.”

Renjun sighs. Mark shoots him a dirty look.

“It must be hard for you to understand why I’m doing this. I’m not entirely sure I understand it myself. But I trust you, I know you’ll figure it out and understand in the end.” 

Mark’s voice has started to waver, choked and hard to listen to. His hands that are holding the letter shake a bit, but he keeps going. 

“Again, I’m so sorry, Love, Johnny.”

Like a wave, the room falls into heavy silence, then roars to life with a sweep of overlapping voices.

“What the hell?”

“And this means what, exactly?”

“Did Johnny start doing drugs? If he went missing because of shady drug shit I’m going to kick his ass.”

“Do you know where Johnny is?”

“What does this have to do with our parents murdering people?”

“God, can you all be quiet?” Donghyuck rolls his eyes. He seems surprisingly nonplussed by all of this. Renjun files that away for later.

“Mark,” Renjun cuts in quickly before the uproar can start again. “Are you going to actually explain this to us?”

At least all the yelling seems to have given Mark time to calm down. He’s steady again as he talks, more in control of himself. Good. Renjun didn’t want to have to deal with that on top of the rest of the shitshow tonight.

“It took me a long time to figure out too, trust me. That’s why I’ve been holding on to it all this time. At first it just hurt too much to look at it, then I didn’t notice the letters, and once I did I didn’t understand them. But after that...okay, you see the part where he tells me to remember what we talked about a few weeks ago?”

Renjun nods. Most of his focus had been on the random letters, because the actual words in the note brought back a pain he thought he’d buried, but he’d caught the gist.

“Well, a couple of weeks before he disappeared we were hanging out in his room and he started talking about codes. Like, secret military shit or whatever codes. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but now….”

“So you’re saying Johnny left you a note.” Jeno blinks. “Where he wrote a secret message. In code.”

“Yes.”

“That’s so cool.” Chenle breathes.

“Couldn’t he have integrated the code better? It kind of sticks out like that,” Jisung says.

“Complicated codes are harder to integrate than TV makes it look. Trust me. I spent months doing research. And this code is pretty complicated. It’s a Vigenere cipher.”

Jisung snorts. “Is that supposed to mean something to us?”

“If you give me five seconds, I’ll explain! Okay, so, put simply, a Vinegere cipher works like this: You choose a word, any word. Then, you look at the cipher grid, which crossections all 26 letters of the alphabet.You follow the row for the letters actually written in front of you to the corresponding letter of your chosen codeword. Whatever letter they integrate on, that’s the hidden meaning.”

Mark gets nothing but blank looks in response. He groans. Behind him, Donghyuck snickers.

“Okay, look.” Mark puts the note down on the table, kneeling in front of it and laying it flat so they can all see. He pulls another sheet of paper out too— it looks like a grid, with a row and column of letters, followed by intersecting letters in the following squares. They all instinctively gather around it. Kids with a treasure map, if ‘kids’ means ‘disillusioned teenagers’ and ‘treasure map’ means ‘secret code written by a missing person which might explain why your parents just murdered someone.’

(No matter how many times Renjun thinks the word ‘murdered’, it still doesn’t feel real, still doesn’t sink in. He should, probably, be having a fully fledged breakdown right now, instead he just feels...not much of anything, welcoming any distraction to occupy his mind.)

“So, the first code. The first letter is ‘U’, so we follow the row for ‘U’, and see where it intersects with the first letter of the codeword, and we do this until we’ve decoded the whole thing.”

“So, what’s the codeword?” Chenle asks, eyes still bright with enthusiasm. “Did Johnny tell you before he went missing?”

“No,” Mark sighs. “I was stuck on that for a while too. I thought I might have been completely wrong about what code it was, and it was something more obscure. But the more I read the note, the more I noticed something weird about it.”

Mark looks at them like he expects them to understand what he means. He has way too much faith in them. If he’s been holding on to this note for almost a year, researching God knows what to figure it out, what makes him think they can get it after hearing it once? 

...Once...for something they’ve only heard once parts of it seemed _very_ familiar, not because they’d heard it before today but because...

“Repetition,” Renjun says. “He repeats the same words throughout a paragraph.”

“Right!” Mark beams. “So, the first word he repeats is ‘remember’, then ‘believe, then ‘understand’. So, those are the code words for each code.”

“My head is spinning,” Jeno complains. “Can you just tell us what the code means? You _have_ decoded it right?”

“Yeah. Yeah. I decoded it a couple of months ago.”

“A couple of months ago? And you didn’t tell us until now?” Jaemin raises an eyebrow.

“Would I have even gotten a chance to? When I tried to talk to you earlier you weren’t exactly all ears,” Mark snaps, then says. “...Sorry. Look, I wanted to tell you but...his messages didn’t make any sense. I thought I must have decoded it wrong, or maybe he’d lost his mind before he left, or...something! But it makes sense now.”

“Mark, what did he say?” Renjun asks.

God, did he always ramble this much?

“Don’t trust them. Take off bracelet. Leave nothing behind.”

“...Okay...So let’s unpack that!” Donghyuck replies with an all too cheerful clap of his hands.

“...So...When he said don’t trust them, did he mean our parents?” Jisung looks thoughtful, fiddling with the sleeves of his hoodie.

Mark nods, resigned.

“We don’t know that!” Jeno protested. “He could be talking about anyone!”

“It was right after a paragraph _about_ their parents, Jeno. Why are you so quick to defend our parents?”

“Why are _you_ so quick to presume they’re ritual murderers!”

Renjun rolls his eyes. 

“He said a lot of shit, Renjun! He was up every night googling stupid conspiracy theories! He probably convinced himself our parents were in the Illuminati or something!”

“Since when did you think conspiracy theories were stupid?” Renjun scoffs.

“Since I grew up, Renjun.”

Renjun wants to fight back. He wants to ask Jeno what’s so grown up about throwing your every waking hour into lacrosse practice and going to shitty parties with your boring, obnoxious lacrosse buddies. Then he remembers the vivid image of a knife plunging into a human body and realises he’s letting himself get caught up in the unimportant, like Jeno and his lacrosse buddies and Mark’s feelings and anything except the fact his parents are killers.

So he pointedly ignores Jeno and asks Mark “What did he mean by the bracelet?”

Since Renjun has known Mark, he’s always worn the exact same bracelet. He’d gotten the story once, so long ago he can’t remember most things from that day, or even that year, but the story itself stuck with him. Mr and Mrs Lee had given Mark and Johnny the bracelets when they were children. There was nothing special about the bracelets themselves—  just simple, silver bands, but they’d been engraved with each others star signs. They’d promised each other to never take them off, and it genuinely seemed like they never had.

“I...don’t know.” Mark is staring pensively at the bracelet. Renjun knows the look on Mark’s face, but he’s not sure how to describe it. Maybe heartbreak, maybe nostalgia, maybe something less or something more.

“Well, you must have took it off at _some point_ right?” Jeno asks.

“Uh...no? I don’t think so anyway.”

“When you sleep?”

“No.”

“When you shower?” 

“No.”

“...Are you okay?”

“Not at all.”

“Well, take it off now then!” Chenle cuts in.

Next to him, Jisung is chewing on his thumbnail. Donghyuck has moved forward, watching Mark intently. Jeno looks stressed. Jaemin looks impatient. Renjun is doing his best to look impassive. Mark...Mark looks terrified. 

“I...I promised him I’d never take it off,” he says in a small voice. 

“And now he’s asking you to take it off! It’s fine, you’re in the clear, he can’t blame you!” Donghyuck points out. 

“Okay.” Mark breathes, then stands up, suddenly filled with determination. “Okay! I’m gonna take it off.”

He fumbles with the clasp for a moment — unsurprising, since he apparently hasn’t used it since the day he put it on. Once he gets it, the silver band slides off his wrist. If anyone was on the outside looking in, the entire scene would look rather odd. Renjun feels rather odd. When he woke up this morning, he never imagined he’d be here. He should have been in his room, listening to music and doing next to nothing. He’d have woken up tomorrow, still hating his parents, but ignorant to how dark they truly are. But instead, as odd as it is, he’s here. 

He’s here, and Mark’s bracelet is held delicately in his hand. 

He’s here, and for a split second nothing happens. 

He’s here, and he sees, with his own eyes, Mark float into the air.

Well, perhaps float is too soft a word. One minute, his feet are on the ground. The next, he seems to be thrown into the air. It’s so fast and sudden that it makes Renjun’s stomach flip. Though he’s not the one in the air, he feels like he’s at the top of roller coaster that’s about to fall down the ramp. Mark’s body is suspended in the sky, not delicately, not like a celestial body or even a bird, but like a puppet on strings. His limbs jerk, his body quivers, and his face is frozen in shock.

Then, he crashes to the ground.

It’s a mess. He doesn’t land gracefully, but in a heap of limbs and pained sounds. Renjun’s first thought is if he’s okay. His second thought, the one he actually verbalises is “Holy shit.”

“That was so cool!” Chenle enthuses, looking like a kid in a candy store.

“...What. The. Fuck,” Jaemin mutters.

“Ergh,” Mark moans. 

Donghyuck helps Mark to his feet. Mark brushes imaginary dirt off his body then looks up at the rest of them, eyes wide and confused.

“What just happened?” Jaemin asks.

Mark blinks. He moves to go towards them, then stumbles, as if his body has to adjust to being on solid ground again. “I— I don’t know.”

“You can fly!” Chenle screams.

“I wouldn’t really call that flying,” Jaemin says. “But it was...something. Holy shit!”

“You can float awkwardly!” Donghyuck cheers. “What...what the hell!”

“This...That just didn’t happen. I don’t know what’s happening, but that didn’t just happen.” Jeno is running his hands through his hair. He’s done that so much this evening that his hair has become a complete mess. It’s a bird’s nest, stress and denial taking the place of carefully laid twigs.. 

“How can you deny that happened? We literally just saw it!” Jaemin argues.

“Maybe because it’s impossible!”

“No. It isn’t.” Jisung is still chewing his thumbnail. He’s quiet, Renjun realises, he has been for a while. Not because he’s pointedly ignoring them, like he was before, but rather because he seems genuinely _shy_ , That’s something that Renjun hasn’t seen in a long time, and he’s instantly slammed with memories of Jisung when he was younger and in hindsight, oh so small, shying away from other kids in elementary and middle school and bemoaning he wasn’t in the same grade as any of his friends.

He has friends now, certainly more friends than Renjun has made in the year since they fell apart, and for some reason that just makes the memories worse.

“It isn’t impossible,” Jisung repeats. “Because...because I can do stuff that should be impossible too.”

“You can fly?” Chenle is now practically in Jisung’s lap, as if staring at him closely will yield the answers.

“No.” Jisung shakes his head. “But I can...do other stuff.”

“Like what? Oh! Do laser beams come out of your eyes? Can you predict the future? No! Wait! I know! If I touch you, I’ll die!”

“You’re literally touching me right now!” Jisung complains, pulling his arm out of Chenle’s grip. “Look, I’ll show you, okay?”

Renjun knows he should be having a lot of thoughts right now. In a way, he is. But all the thoughts are in the back of his mind, trapped behind a wall he built without even really meaning to. He knows that seeing something traumatic, or something unbelievable, can do that to you. Your mind becomes empty, detached from reality, because you just can’t take any more and your mind is trying to protect you.

In the past half an hour, he has witnessed both the traumatic and the unbelievable. It’s funny, in a way, and the acknowledgement of this irony is one of the few things that slips through this wall. He’s always known that people kill, he hasn’t trusted his parents for years, and he believes in many things some people would consider unbelievable. Yet, he’s still fallen victim to basic human biology, and despite wishing that he could sit and think through everything he’s just seen logically, he’s left frozen in his own body to do very little but watch. 

Gently, Jisung places his hand on the table and closes his eyes. He takes a deep breath, and from the point where his fingertips meet the tabletop, little white lines start spreading. It’s slow, at first, but then there’s a _rush_ , and the entire table is encased in ice.

“Wow” Chenle breathes, reaching out to grab the table. As soon as his hand makes contact, it shatters into tiny pieces. 

“...Oops!” He exclaims. “But this is so cool!”

“You’re like Iceman!” Donghyuck adds. 

Jisung scrunches his nose. “Who's Iceman?”

Donghyuck opens his mouth, but Renjun interrupts “It’s kind of in the name.”

“Is that all you can do? Can you do that thing Frozone does where he travels on ice? Can you make slushies? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I...I don’t really know what I can do. It’s hard to control,” he admits. 

Renjun doesn’t judge him for not answering the question of why he didn’t tell them. It would be more surprising if he had. 

“What does this mean?” Mark asks. “What...what _are_ we? Is there something wrong with us?”

Renjun is the first to hear the footsteps. They’re quiet, at first, but get louder as they approach. Panic stills him, but he manages to shut the others up before they get too close. His heart beats in time with them, getting louder and heavier as the footsteps do. There’s no knock at the door before it opens. The conversation halts all at once, as does his breath. He knows instinctively that their parents can’t know that they know, or about whatever is happening with Mark and Jisung. He doesn’t know what will happen if they do, but he can feel in his very being that it wouldn’t be good. 

“Hello, kids,” Renjun’s mom is at the door. Her hands are folded in front of her silk dress. Poised and proper, even when completely unnecessary. Renjun glances from her over to all his friends. Thankfully, none of them look too suspicious. “We’re done with the meeting. Renjun, get ready to go. The rest of you, your parents are waiting for you downstairs.”

They file downstairs the quietest they’ve ever been. Renjun keeps glancing at his mom as she walks with them, wondering if she knows something. She seems no different than usual, but he learned his own flawless poker face from her.

Downstairs, nothing seems off. The parents collect their kids and finish chatting amongst themselves — small talk about business ventures, condos in the alps and the best brands of champagne. He calms down, just a little. 

“Time to go, Renjun.” His father claps him on the shoulder and ushers him to get his coat. For a moment, things are almost normal. 

Mark meets eyes with him as he reaches for his own jacket. 

“Tonight. Two A.M. The old place,” he whispers.

The world falls to abnormality again. He has no time to reply before Mark is gone, and he finds himself in his parents’ car without remembering how he got there.

He curls into the back seat and takes a deep breath. He appreciates that his parents aren’t the type to play music in the car. The silence lets him think, and God knows he needs to. 

* * *

1:28

1:29

1:30

Renjun watches the clock tick down from his position on the bed. When he’d arrived home, he’d ran from his parents’ small talk (“Hasn’t Jaemin grown up well?” “Mrs. Lee always burns the dumplings, who lets that woman cater?” “Is it just me or did Mr. Park seem distracted? $50 says he’s cheating on the wife.”) citing a stomach ache, curled up on top of his covers, and not moved.

He should leave now. Well, he should leave now as in it will take thirty minutes to get to what Mark referred to as “The old place”. He shouldn’t leave now. He shouldn’t leave now because he’d have to sneak out and he’s done enough sneaking today. He shouldn’t leave now because somehow he knows leaving means _leaving_ — leaving something he won’t be able to come back to, though he doesn’t know or want to ponder on what that is.

No, he shouldn’t leave, says voice in his mind. It sounds like his mother’s. He gets to his feet.

His parents will be asleep by now. They always were the “early to bed, early to rise” type. They tried to instill that attitude in him too, and it worked until he realised that the later he stays up and the later he wakes up the more time he has to be alone and away from them.

He pulls on a hoodie and shoves his phone, wallet and keys in his pocket. He doesn’t know if he should take anything else. If there’s a protocol for this situation, he’s never found it and he left it too late to make it. Just a hoodie it is.

Steeling himself, he reaches out and opens his bedroom door. It opens to an empty hallway, and Renjun’s body slacks with relief. At least, it does until he takes a few steps and realises that the hall light is still on. 

“Renjun? Are you still up?” It’s his dad’s voice, completely and utterly familiar, but the flash of terror and _blood, death, oh god, they killed him, they killed him_ it sends down his spine is new.

His dad is staring down at him from the open door of the bathroom. He’s dressed in blue flannel pyjamas ( _not red thank god not red)_ and has a toothbrush hanging out his mouth. He looks like a dad. Not a killer. Not even a big shot architect. Just...a normal, every day father. 

Renjun doesn’t know if that makes him feel better or worse. He doesn’t think there’s a name for a lot of the things he’s felt today.

“Yeah,” Renjun says. He tried to sound like his normal self, which thankfully when it comes to his parents is a teenager fuelled by his apathy and dismissal for them, as his voice comes out emotionless. “I was just...going to get ready for bed now, actually.”

He crosses his arms, staring at his father in the doorway. He likes to think of it as a challenge, (Let me in the bathroom) (Call out my lie) (Tell me why you killed him) (Tell me who you really are) but if his eyes don’t quite meet his dad’s, then he doesn’t have to admit to that.

His father hesitates for a moment, staring at Renjun with hard eyes. Then, he breaks into a smile. 

“Okay, kiddo, I’ll get out of your way then. Just give me a second to finish off in here.” He closes the bathroom door behind him and Renjun let’s out a breath before running into his bedroom and slamming his own door shut. 

The front door isn’t an option now. If his parents aren’t even in bed yet then who knows how long it will take them to fall asleep? He doesn’t have the time to wait for them, and he _can’t_ risk getting caught. 

He throws his bedroom window open. Third story, too far to jump without hurting himself in one way or another. He thinks of all those teen movies they used to watch...What did they do in those again? Climb down the lattice? Well he doesn’t have one. Tie the bedsheets together? Who the hell has that many bedsheets in their room?

“Renjun? Son, the bathroom is free,” his dad’s voice comes from the other side of the door.

 “Be out in a minute!” Renjun shouts back.

He opens the window, looking down at the drop. It’s dark. He can barely see the ground, let alone a miraculous way to get him there safely.

Knuckles rap on his door. Three knocks. 

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

“Son, what are you doing in there? I thought you wanted to use the bathroom?” His dad doesn’t phrase it like a question. He phrases it like an accusation.

“Uh, too tired. I’ll see you in the morning. Goodnight.”

Renjun clutches the windowsill, giving himself leverage to lean out into the night a little more. There’s an old tree not far from his window. An oak of some kind, if he remembers correctly. Back before Johnny disappeared, Renjun would spend hours in the shade of the leaves— sketching, reading, dreaming— Once, back in middle school, or maybe even before, they’d all had a slumber party under the stars. Johnny had told them scary stories. Stories of monsters: hook-handed men and black eyed children and girls that appear in the mirror if you say their name three times. That night, he’d sat under the tree long after he was supposed to be in his sleeping bag. When a figure arose from the dark and sat next to him, he didn’t startle.

_“Scared?” Jaemin asked._

_“Not really.” He shook his head. “You?”_

_“Of course not,” the other scoffed. “Monsters aren’t real.”_

_Renjun thought of unexplained bruises, muttered excuses, dark eyes staring at them from the porch._

_“Not ones like that, anyway,” Renjun breathes._

_“Yeah,” Jaemin agrees, gripping his hand. “Not ones like that.”_

Maybe if he jumps just right he can reach the stupid fucking tree.

The lock on his door rattles as his dad tries to open it.

“Renjun? Renjun why is this door locked?!” Rattle. Knock. Knock. Knock. Rattle.

 Maybe he can grab a branch and climb down until he can reach the ground without injury.

His dad is shouting now “Open this door! Now!”

Fuck. It’ll never work. The tree is no more than a shapeless blob. Even if he _could_ jump that far he doesn’t know where to aim for.

“I have a copy of the key! Don’t think I won’t use it!”

He doesn’t have the time to let it burn through him that his dad has a secret key to his room. Maybe later he’ll be angry about it. Right now all he can do is close his eyes, clench the windowsill tighter and think about how he needs a way out.

Knock.

_I need a way out._

Rattle.

_I need a way out._

Knock.

_I need a way out._

Ra-THACK!

Renjun’s eyes shoot open. That sound didn’t come from the door. It came from somewhere far closer. That should scare him, but it doesn’t, and he doesn’t know why expect the fact he can still hear his dad on the other side of the door.

He doesn’t look back. Instead he looks down. Next to each of his clenched hands is now a bundle of roots— thin on their own, but knitted together to make two thick and sturdy ropes that leads right to the ground. Between each rope he spies more roots, knotted horizontally and spaced evenly apart, just a little thinner than their vertical counterparts.

A ladder.

“Renjun!” his father thunders. 

Without hesitation, Renjun grabs onto the ladder and follows it down. When his feet hit the ground, he breaks into a run, but not without stopping to eye the old oak that sits by his window, an unusual feeling in his chest  and the beginnings of a theory in his mind.

**Author's Note:**

> The superheroes/superpowers tag isn't there by accident I promise we'll get to that.
> 
> I'm on twt @kdnciub if you wanna hang out and curiouscat.me/luminaries if you wanna send hate mail


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